


you know the game (so play it)

by tooshy



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Friends to Lovers, How Do I Tag, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 20:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15323235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooshy/pseuds/tooshy
Summary: Johnny was honest-to-God just looking for something to get off to. Figures he would somehow manage to come across his best friend’s sex-tape on some dodgy amateur porn site.





	you know the game (so play it)

**Author's Note:**

> i apologize

 

It speaks volumes of Johnny’s character that the first thing he notices on a porn site is its lousy web design and not all the fully exposed human anatomy in webcam ads and video previews. The single-column layout is just plain awkward, a job done so poorly that Johnny thinks it should be considered fraud to even charge someone for designing something like it.

Maybe Johnny is an old-fashioned guy who likes to stick with his imagination as his go-to to help get himself off, because what's better than your own innate personal TV? Even then, the few times he does look up porn, he tends to stay on more average (and well-designed) sites, far more conventional than the page he's currently scrolling down. His shit day called for it, though.

Cleanex by the bed, half-empty lube bottle somewhere under the covers and fly undone, Johnny rearranges the notebook on his lap while looking for something watchable (He spent fifteen minutes scrolling through video thumbnails of people with tails and costumes before he realized he was in the furry tag. Don't those suits itch when they sweat? Johnny’s got questions). What catches his eye is by far the most normal looking one, a title with some porn lingo he's unfamiliar with, but an innocent enough video preview—with no pig ears or faux fur tails—of a couple half-naked facing away from the camera. Good enough. _Click_.

The next ten seconds play out as follows.

Johnny shimmies his pants down to his thighs as the clip shows two guys kneeling on a bed, languid kisses with one cupping the other’s cheeks that feels a bit too out of place for a page like _twinksfordays.com_. They’re both slim, figures moving back and forth with the push and pull of their bodies, hands already lightly scratching skin.

But then they break apart, one pushes the other down on the single bed to climb into his lap, and when the hands cupping his cheeks and covering up his face are gone and Johnny gets a first good look at the guy’s side profile—well, _fuck_. That is, unmistakably so, his best friend. That's Ten no doubt.

His notebook’s spacebar has never been pressed so violently. The video pauses and the picture of his friend shirtless and sat in some guy’s lap stares back at him almost jokingly, like it’s daring him to press play again to double check it’s really him. His gut clenches and his heart tries to climb up his throat, anxiety and confusion and something he can't quite place eating him up. Does Ten know this is online? Who is he with? When is this from? Is this the only video he's done? _Who is he with?_

Furries got nothing on this, _now_ Johnny has questions.

 

* * *

 

“So I didn't take the job. Commuting that far for such a low pay just isn't worth it, you know? I’ll have to go for something more local.”

 _Low pay._  Did he record that ‘cause he needed money? He would have totally lent him some if he had asked. Oh, is Ten now a prostitute?

“Johnny, dude, are you listening?”

Reality swims back into focus, welcoming him with a frowning Ten across the table and an iced Americano warming up in his hold. The cafe’s windows are fogged up, only allowing him to see blurs of people wrapped in coats rushing by. Orders are called out and machinery is turned on and off to prepare drinks, even if the place is far from crowded. Why can't he stop thinking about it?

“Everything okay?” Ten’s frown eases but his question is more of a certainty than an enquiry. His fingers play with the straw in his drink, but all Johnny can picture is those nails leaving red lines on someone’s skin. He has to keep it in, he has to. He can't just blurt it out.

“I found your sex-tape online.”

Johnny’s never been so thankful for a place being empty enough to go out of business. Ten’s face is blankly inscrutable, but his fingers never cease to fiddle with his straw. Fingers that can scratch and push someone down on a bed. Johnny wants to drown in thin air.

Time is drawn out, and it's a week in the shape of five seconds before Ten is shaking with laughter. Johnny is so, so lost. He's way too tall to hide under a table, maybe he could make a dash for the toilets.

“How did you get to it?” His laughs rings out cheerfully, bright without a care in the world, much to Johnny’s chagrin. “How did little Johnny fall down the rabbit hole, hmm? Was PornHub too mainstream for you?”

His face is so red he can feel the rush of the blood on his cheeks. “You don't get to make fun of me for watching porn when you—you know.”

“I what?” He's had years of practice to train his patience with Ten. Years of jokes and teasing, prodding right where it hurts but only ever slightly enough to irk him to no end. He likes to think he got the hang of it by now, but Ten’s wide, toothy smile that shows he’s having way too much fun with this gets to him anyways. “I really don't know what I did, John. Tell me. Keep in all the juicy details.”

Johnny shakes his head. If those fucking _nails_ keep tapping the table he's gonna lose his mind. He can't deal right now.

“I’m gonna be late for class, see you.”

“It’s Sunday, genius!”

 

* * *

 

The topic of Ten’s sex-tape doesn’t die down for weeks.

Try as he might, Johnny’s brain will go back to those ten seconds all the time. When Jaehyun is talking nineteen to the dozen beside him at work, when he's trying to pay attention in Composition class, when he's shopping with his roommate, even that one time he was stuck watching Peppa Pig for an hour because the TV remote had ran out of batteries and he was too worn out to get up to change the channel. The mental image of Ten making out with Peppa’s shrill voice as the soundtrack haunts him for the next few days.

So Johnny pops questions out of the blue, assuming once he knows the _why_ and _with whom_ he’ll be able to move past it. The _why_ comes out while playing billiards on a Thursday night, celebrating with a beer in hand their midterms being done with.

Ten pockets his third ball of the night with a grin, shrugging when he answers, “For fun.”

Johnny’s never prided himself on reading Ten well, because even when he’s aware of his sardonic way of dealing with things and the type of stuff that can get under his skin, it's hard to tell a lot of the time whether he is putting up a front, honestly having a laugh at something or making shit up as he goes. He's too good of an actor, a blessing at age nine for all his school plays and a burden at twenty-two for a friend that’s just trying his best.

So Johnny whistles and mutters a _fair enough,_  and that seems to be it, until Ten has pocketed all stripped balls and he’s aiming for the eight ball, when Johnny puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him from taking his turn and asks, “So you didn’t get paid? At all?”

They are asked to leave after Ten tries to hit him upside the head with his pool cue. They sit outside the pub and laugh about it until Johnny’s stomach cries for help, and Ten clings to his arm all the way back to their residence hall.

 _With whom_ gains him a more articulate answer, but still as relaxed as ever.

“Remember Tae? The one I went out with last summer? You never really got to meet him but I posted like, tons of pics.”

The only sound in Johnny’s room is Ten erasing and rewriting his misspellings—with _very_ little care, his notes are torn beyond repair by now—while Johnny tries to recall with a pen between his teeth and his English books about to fall off the bed.

He bounces on his knees once he remembers, making _Twelfth Night_ tumble down to the floor. “Lee Taeyong!” Ten drops his eraser in order to throw one of the butter cookies he’s munching on at Johnny’s open mouth as a reward.

While Johnny went away on a family trip last summer break, Ten stayed in the dorms and managed to go out, break up, get back together and break up with Taeyong one last time within two and a half months. He hadn’t told him much of Taeyong even then, and Johnny had figured that whilst they were going out, they didn’t seem to be heading anywhere near serious. Maybe only “let’s record ourselves fucking and upload it to the Internet” kind of serious, but nothing further.

The thing is a _why_ and a _with whom_ don’t make those ten seconds quit replaying in his head, and realizing that the reason he didn’t recognize Taeyong was because it wasn’t him he focused on once the clip loaded doesn’t help.

 

* * *

 

Johnny implements a fool-proof plan that goes as follows: He’ll pretend he doesn’t daydream on the daily about his best friend shirtless and straddling his hips, and never again bring up Ten’s sex-tape for what remains of his life. Not only does he spectacularly fail, but that’s when things get really gay.

Ten is flipping through his DVD basket, voicing his opinions on Johnny’s choice in movies (“ _Fast and Furious_? Man, where’s the good stuff? No _Sex and the City_?”) He has one of Johnny’s quilts around his shoulders, the long sleeves of his shirt rolled up and hair messy. It warms his heart a little seeing Ten like that, all wrapped up in his bed duvet and rubber ducky socked feet rubbing back and forth against his carpet, with a carefully picked out selection of movies between his legs that he continues to thumb through.

It’s not that he wants to ask, but it’s the one thing that’s been running circles in his mind. There’s no _bro_ way to go about it, he’ll just have to go for it tactfully.

“You have shit taste, so it's between Ratatouille and—”

“Remember your sex-tape?”

 _Smooth_.

Ten gasps dramatically as he leans forward, eyes wide with ever-present mischief. It’s like his goal in life is to make Johnny miserable. “You wanna watch that? With me in here? You kinky fucker—”

Johnny kicks his side with his bare feet until Ten falls on his side laughing. The ten seconds play over again.

“Just please tell me this and I’ll never bring it up again—stop laughing, oh my God, just tell me if you—Did you top or bottom?”

The laughter tamps down suddenly, and then he’s being pulled down by the wrist to the carpeted floor with a thump. Okay, maybe that was a bit invasive, but _ouch_.

“I thought you said you watched it.” Rolling onto his side, he sees Ten with eyebrows raised, now halfway sitting up, just enough to reach the DVD player and pop in Ratatouille. The wheels in Johnny’s head slowly begin to turn.

“What?” Johnny realizes he didn't mention a crucial detail when confronting Ten a bit too late. “Oh no, I didn't. I did find it and I watched a bit until I realised that was you, but it was like, a few seconds. That was it.”

They both lie on their sides on the floor, facing each other as the Disney intro plays on the TV. Ten looks puzzled for a moment, but a blink later it’s gone.

“So—uhm—you didn't actually...” He starts, and Johnny is quick to catch on. “No, no, I didn't watch it.”

Johnny expects about anything other than Ten jumping to his feet with a grin, talking as he walks towards the couch. “You know I don't like spoilers. Sorry, if you wanna know the ending you gotta watch the movie.”

 

* * *

 

Johnny stands in front of Ten’s dorm door at three in the morning having learnt two things. One, grass dew is cold. Two, if you walk through it with only socks on it's even colder and your feet will get soaked. Sue him, he was in a rush.

He’s about to shoot Ten another text when he opens the door looking wide awake, still wearing his day clothes and earphones around his neck. “Hey, did something happen? Are you alright?”

It’s common knowledge by now that Johnny cannot for the life of him approach anything with tact. Why try now.

“Why did you tell me to watch it?” He’s unable to stay still, getting on his tiptoes just to drop back down, an itch sliding down his back.

Ten makes a face, eyes clueless. “Watch what?”

Oh, he’s gonna make him say it.

“Your— _video_ , you know. That's like a total invasion of privacy, but I can't get it out of my head and I keep thinking of you jumping me at the worst times and I need to know if you bottomed or topped because I’m losing _sleep_ over it. Shit, that sounds really weird out loud.”

A smile is weakly tried to be held back in Ten’s face, the crinkle of his eyes giving him away. “Easy, tiger.” He shuts the door behind him, leaning against it. Johnny would object to having this conversation on the dormitory hall of all places, but he remembers Jungwoo is Ten’s roommate and he doesn’t feel like being yelled at for waking him up by breathing too loud.

“Okay, first things first.” Ten pulls out his phone and taps around for a few seconds before the screen is turned to him, and that damn thumbnail that got him to click on the video weeks ago is staring back at him. Is he for real?

“I told you I can't watch it, it's—”

“Invasive, yeah, I know. Just press play.”

Johnny gives him the side eye, but all Ten does is shake the phone and push it closer to him, so he gives in with an overly dramatic sigh.

The ten seconds he knows all too well play out once more, Ten not even bothering to mute the phone even when a moan or two are heard. Johnny is about to ask why he’s being made watch his friend having sex right in front of him in the middle of the hall with full volume when the video cuts, and then—

_We're no strangers to love, you know the rules and so do I._

Johnny looks up from the device and blinks at him.

“Did you just rickroll me? Why—”

“There's no sex-tape, idiot. This is the video.”

Johnny blinks again.

Ten sighs. There’s a hint of something in his face, not quite shame but—embarrassment? That’s a new one. “We were drunk and bored and Taeyong just started belting out that song and, uhm, I guess we thought it would be funny to trick horny gay guys and rickroll them mid-wank. I thought the site would remove it once someone complained about it but it's still there apparently? I forgot about it until you mentioned it. So yeah. No porn.”

 _No porn._  Johnny never thought he would be baffled by someone saying that. His wet socks are sticking to his feet and leaving a puddle on the carpeted floor, though the ridiculousness of the scene can’t sink in through the confusion. What does he mean _no porn?_

He flaps his arms around, while Ten looks more and more amused by the second. “So—I—why didn't you say anything?”

“I told you, I thought you had watched it!”

“But I kept asking you about it!”

“But you never mentioned sex! You asked why I did it, who I did it with, that's it.”

“But I kept calling it sex-tape! I asked if someone paid you! And you called me kinky for bringing it up.”

“I thought you were joking!”

“When do I ever joke?”

“...True that.”

The door behind Ten is suddenly pushed open, forcing him to tumble towards Johnny who catches him by the shoulders. Jungwoo is poking his head out, deep frown countering his soft features. “Can you two shut up? I have a test tomorrow, make out and go to bed.” The door is slammed shut again.

The water on the floor is probably going to smell humid tomorrow, and Johnny assumes a cold is unavoidable. He needs a hot shower and maybe let himself sleep in tomorrow.

“Jungwoo’s right, I should—”

“Hey,” Ten smiles, no trace of embarrassment left. Johnny is not sure that’s entirely good. “Why did you need to know so badly?” He tilts his head to the side, hands resting on the other’s chest, who is still holding him by the shoulders. This should feel a little bit more romantic, Johnny knows, but his wet feet and the fact Jungwoo just chastised them kind of ruined the mood for him. “What did you mean by quote unquote I keep thinking of you jumping me?”

Oh. That.

Johnny opens and closes his mouth a few times. “Hold on, I’m trying to come up with a not too gay reason.”

Ten hums, grin widening, and he’s pulled closer to him by the collar of his pajama top. “Do you still wanna know?”

It doesn’t sound like a trick question, and Johnny’s too deep into it to care by now, so he nods.

The peck Ten gives him is quick, a split-second press of lips, before he goes for a second one. “Well, you know I don't like giving spoilers. You're going to have to watch the movie to know the ending.”

(Jungwoo groans from somewhere inside the dorm. “Oh my god, fuck on the couch for all I care, just _please_ stop talking.”)


End file.
